Facts help a West Virginia poultry farmer make the EPA back down.
The Wheeling Intelligencer editorializes:
But for the courage of Hardy County, W.Va., poultry producer Lois Alt, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency probably would be ordering scores of chicken farmers to comply with harsh new requirements or pay stiff fines.
But Alt took the EPA to court – and the agency backed down. It settled rather than let a judge and perhaps a jury decide whether it was being reasonable and acting within the law.
Perhaps there is a reason for that sudden lack of fortitude at the EPA.
Researchers at the University of Delaware have found that levels of nitrogen pollutants in poultry house manure are a whopping 55 percent lower than the EPA claims. In other words, the agency – this would be the “science is settled” crowd in Washington – doesn’t have much of a leg on which to stand.
Good for UD researchers for exposing the EPA. Now, perhaps someone will take a truly objective look at other environmental rules, such as those involving coal.
The EPA has a policy — or it seems to — of encouraging lawsuits that will force it to do something it wants to do. It has a long history of litigating to exhaustion those who want to force it to be reasonable. This is a rare victory. Any chance of Ms Alt getting costs out of the deal? More of that and the EPA might actually learn to respect science, liberty and law.
I’m reading Dickens’ “Bleak House” and his caricature — we wish it was caricature — of British Chancery law seems only too accurate for environmental litigation now.
Come on. With the amount of sampling that the agency requires us to do, they couldn’t be bothered to make actual tests of what they were regulating?